A comprehensive monograph on the work of KAWS, one of the most sought-after artists and creative forces of our time Drawing from Pop art traditions, KAWS's work straddles the line between fine art and popular culture, crossing the mediums of painting and sculpture, along with fashion, merchandise, vinyl toys, and, most recently, augmented reality. This book, made in close collaboration with the artist, features his most well-known works alongside sketches, preparatory drawings, and never-before-seen images of KAWS at work, revealing the meticulous process behind his iconic artworks. Accompanying a major retrospective exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, it captures the artist's unique ability to reshape the ways we think about contemporary art and culture today.

Based on the blockbuster 2022 solo show in London, KAWS: New Fiction documents the groundbreaking, multi-layered exhibition that presented the artist’s new and recent works in physical and augmented reality. A unique collaboration between the acclaimed artist KAWS, the Serpentine Galleries, digital art platform Acute Art, and the online video game phenomenon Fortnite, KAWS: New Fiction bridges the gap between the physical and virtual worlds, showcasing KAWS’s artworks as they’ve never been seen before. This one-of-a-kind book chronicles the iconic KAWS figure as it journeys through viewing the exhibition’s paintings, sculptures, site-specific additional artworks revealed via augmented reality (visible at the show through a dedicated AR app), and the virtual recreation of the physical gallery simultaneously featured in Fortnite. KAWS: New Fiction is a celebration of the unprecedented exhibition, and KAWS’s creative influence, as it was experienced in physical, virtual, and augmented realities.

In 2007, Ai Weiwei (born 1957) presented a surprising new project titled "Fairytale" at Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany. He invited 1001 Chinese citizens of different ages and from various backgrounds to travel to Germany, all expenses paid, to experience their own fairytale holiday for 28 days. The logistics for this project were complex and entailed a hefty budget, as the artist later recalled, enumerating the considerations: "to design the trip and activities for the tourists, to hope to get their passports, their visas, their insurance and air tickets, to organize the place where they can live in Kassel, to hire cooks, make products which are connected to the journey and would be needed for it..." Happily, "Fairytale" was a runaway success for the artist, the participants and for Documenta. It was judged by critics to be one of the most sensational artworks at Documenta that year, and led to an acclaimed documentary and global media coverage. This publication offers critical analyses of the project from Roger M. Buergel, Daniel Birnbaum, Christian Holler, Raphael Gygax and Ai Weiwei himself.

The former director of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm makes his literary debut with this dramatic and riveting novel of book publishing, emigres, spies, and diplomats in World War II Sweden, based on his grandfather's life In 1933, after Hitler and the Nazi Party consolidated power in Germany, Immanuel Birnbaum, a German-Jewish journalist based in Warsaw, is forbidden from writing for newspapers in his homeland. Six years later, just months before the German invasion of Poland that ignites World War II, Immanuel escapes to Sweden with his wife and two young sons. Living as a refugee in Stockholm, Immanuel continues to write, contributing articles to a liberal Swiss newspaper under the name Dr. B. He becomes increasingly entangled with British intelligence agents who plan several acts of sabotage on the orders of Winston Churchill. But when the Swedish postal service picks up a letter written in invisible ink, clearly by Dr. B. himself, the Allied plotters are exposed. But could a Jew living in exile and targeted for death by the Nazis have wanted to tip them off? Illuminated by the wartime experiences of the author's grandfather, Dr. B. is a riveting story of emigres, spies and diplomats that shines a light on a forgotten corner of World War II history. 'A superb thriller, a cross between Tom Stoppard's Travesties and The Thirty-Nine Steps ... You can't put it down. This is an astonishing debut and Daniel Birnbaum is clearly a talent to look out for' The Jewish Chronicle 'If you're looking for a ridiculously brilliant story, you can stop looking ... He's got the world's best story - he's got Dr B' Svenska Dagbladet 'An astonishing thriller-novel ... reminiscent of both Hjalmar Soederberg's Doctor Glass as well as the dreamy melancholy in The Rings of Saturn by W.G Sebald' Aftonbladet 'A moving evocation of a life beset by conflicts in a troubled time' Kirkus Reviews

The former director of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm makes his literary debut with this dramatic and riveting novel of book publishing, emigres, spies, and diplomats in World War II Sweden based on his grandfather's life In 1933, after Hitler and the Nazi Party consolidated power in Germany, Immanuel Birnbaum, a German-Jewish journalist based in Warsaw, is forbidden from writing for newspapers in his homeland. Six years later, just months before the German invasion of Poland that ignites World War II, Immanuel escapes to Sweden with his wife and two young sons. Living as a refugee in Stockholm, Immanuel continues to write, contributing articles to a liberal Swiss newspaper under the name Dr. B. He becomes increasingly entangled with British intelligence agents who plan several acts of sabotage on the orders of Winston Churchill. But when the Swedish postal service picks up a letter written in invisible ink, clearly by Dr. B. himself, the Allied plotters are exposed. But could a Jew living in exile and targeted for death by the Nazis have wanted to tip them off? Illuminated by the wartime experiences of the author's grandfather, Dr. B. is a riveting story of emigres, spies and diplomats that shines a light on a forgotten corner of World War II history. 'A superb thriller, a cross between Tom Stoppard's Travesties and The Thirty-Nine Steps ... You can't put it down. This is an astonishing debut and Daniel Birnbaum is clearly a talent to look out for' The Jewish Chronicle 'If you're looking for a ridiculously brilliant story, you can stop looking ... He's got the world's best story - he's got Dr B' Svenska Dagbladet 'An astonishing thriller-novel ... reminiscent of both Hjalmar Soederberg's Doctor Glass as well as the dreamy melancholy in The Rings of Saturn by W.G Sebald' Aftonbladet 'A moving evocation of a life beset by conflicts in a troubled time' Kirkus Reviews

As museums worldwide shuttered in 2020 because of the novel coronavirus, New York-based cultural strategist András Szántó conducted a series of interviews with an international group of museum leaders. In a moment when economic, political, and cultural shifts are signaling the start of a new era, the directors speak candidly about the historical limitations and untapped potential of art museums. Each of the twenty-eight dialogues in this book explores a particular topic of relevance to art institutions today, and tomorrow. What emerges from the series of in-depth conversations is a composite portrait of a generation of museum leaders working to make institutions more open, democratic, inclusive, experimental and experiential, technologically savvy, culturally polyphonic, attuned to the needs of their visitors and communities, and concerned with addressing the defining issues of the societies around them. The dialogues offer glimpses of how museums around the globe are undergoing an accelerated phase of reappraisal and reinvention. CONVERSATION PARTNERS: Marion Ackermann, Cecilia Alemani, Anton Belov, Meriem Berrada, Daniel Birnbaium, Tom Campbell, Tania Cohen, Rhana Devenport, Maria Mercedes Gonzales, Max Hollein, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Mami Kataoka, Brian Kennedy, Koyo Kouoh, Sonia Lawson, Adam Levine, Victoria Noorthoorn, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Anne Pasternak, Adriano Pedrosa, Suhanya Raffel, Axel Ruger, Katrina Sedwick, Franklin Sirmans, Eugene Tan, Phil Tinari, Marc-Olivier Wahler, Marie-Cécile Zinsou

Part of JRP]Ringer's innovative "Documents" series, published with Les Presses du Reel and dedicated to critical writings, this publication comprises a unique collection of interviews by Hans Ulrich Obrist mapping the development of the curatorial field--from early independent curators in the 1960s and 70s and the experimental institutional programs developed in Europe and the U.S. through the inception of Documenta and the various biennales and fairs--with pioneering curators Anne D'Harnoncourt, Werner Hoffman, Jean Leering, Franz Meyer, Seth Siegelaub, Walter Zanini, Johannes Cladders, Lucy Lippard, Walter Hopps, Pontus Hulten and Harald Szeemann. Speaking of Szeemann on the occasion of this legendary curator's death in 2005, critic Aaron Schuster summed up, "the image we have of the curator today: the curator-as-artist, a roaming, freelance designer of exhibitions, or in his own witty formulation, a 'spiritual guest worker'... If artists since Marcel Duchamp have affirmed selection and arrangement as legitimate artistic strategies, was it not simply a matter of time before curatorial practice--itself defined by selection and arrangement--would come to be seen as an art that operates on the field of art itself?"

This new title celebrates 50 years of the creative force of nature that is the artistic partnership of Gilbert & George. Published in cooperation with the LUMA Foundation in Arles, France, on the occasion of their retrospective exhibition on show from 2 July to 23 September 2018. The book will feature five interviews with Gilbert & George by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Daniel Birnbaum, one for each decade of their practice. This title will be heavily illustrated with examples of Gilbert & George's artworks from their early years to their most recent series. Designed by Gilbert & George themselves, The Great Exhibition will feature their trademark style and panache. Introduced by a text co-authored by Obrist and Birnbaum, this publication will also feature several extracts from Michael Bracewell's 2017 publication What is Gilbert & George?. All text will be presented in both French and English.

"ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s-60s" is the first large-scale historical survey in the United States dedicated to the German artist group Zero (1957-66). The group was founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, who were joined by Gunther Uecker in 1961, and ZERO, an international network of like-minded artists from Europe, Japan and North and South America--including Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Yayoi Kusama, Piero Manzoni, Almir Mavignier, Jan Schoonhoven and Jesus Rafael Soto--who shared their aspirations to redefine art in the aftermath of World War II. The catalogue explores the experimental practices developed by the more than 30 artists from nine countries featured in the show, whose work anticipated aspects of Land art, Minimalism and Conceptual art. The publication is organized around points of intersection, exchange and collaboration that defined these artists' shared history. Among the themes explored are the establishment of new definitions of painting; the introduction of movement and light as both formal and idea-based aspects of art; the use of space as subject and material; the interrogation of the relationship between nature, technology and humankind; and the production of live actions or demonstrations. At once a snapshot of a specific group and a portrait of a generation, this book celebrates the pioneering nature of both the art and the transnational vision advanced by the ZERO network.

One of the most important artists of his generation, Olafur Eliasson (born 1967) creates immersive environments and spectacular public installations that probe the cognitive aspects of vision and transform the act of looking into a social experience. Merging art and science, Eliasson engages the observer as participant, challenging the passive viewing experience by utilizing such elements as temperature, smell, moisture and light to trigger physical sensations. "Olafur Eliasson: Inner City Out" documents the artist's first project in Berlin, where he has lived and worked for many years. Designed for the Martin-Gropius-Bau, and curated by Daniel Birnbaum, it examines the relationship between the museum and the city, bridging the two through ephemeral installations placed in various locations throughout the city as well as within the museum itself.

50 Moons of Saturn is the catalog of the exhibition curated by Daniel Birnbaum for T2 - the second Torino Triennale. It brings together works by fifty young international artists and presents two special projects by Paul Chan and Olafur Eliasson. "The Saturnine mind is gloomy and depressed, yet inspired and radiant; passive and fundamentally negative, yet rebellious and magnificently productive. Traditionally linked to the artist's temperament, melancholy is the state of mind of inspiration" (Daniel Birnbaum).